American Airlines Responds To Psychotic OJ Incident

By Ben PopkenDecember 16, 2009

American Airlines made this statement to Fox & Friends regarding the story we posted last week of a first-class passenger who was given a warning that he might face federal charges for asking a flight attendant for a glass of orange juice:

We are in the midst of a thorugh investigation. We do not just speak with the customers filing the complaint. We are also talking to all the crew members, not just the flight attendant in question. When the investigation is complete we will take any appropriate action as necessary.

The story has some legs, with pickup on Fox and apparently the local Dallas Fort Worth stations have been tracking it pretty hard:

A comment left on Galley Gossip, by John Reid, the passenger who was given the formal warning, gives further incident into the events that took place:

“I am the airline passenger whose request for orange juice has caused so much internet traffic. Although the vast majority of the responses on the blogs have been overwhelmingly supportive of me, I’m surprised and disappointed at a few of them that have actually been empathetic towards the flight attendant. If I wrote everything that happened on that flight, my own response would be longer than most people would care to read. Thus, I’d like to point out a few facts for the time being:

1) Before that ill-fated flight, I had never even met the writer of the article that has caused so much internet discussion. He would have absolutely no reason to lie or embellish a story about someone he’d never met.

2) A passenger seated across from me later told an AA representative that at least four passengers had issues with this flight attendant, and added that I “happened to be the unlucky guy she exploded on.”

3) Every single passenger in my row as well as in the row behind me (thus, the only passengers that could see what transpired) all walked off the plane with me in unison when I was told that I’d have to meet with an AA representative at the arrival gate. At least two of them without my even asking volunteered to be witnesses for me.

4) All 6+ of these passengers/witnesses not only passionately defended me to the AA rep. at the gate, but all of them stayed to talk with her for at least 30 minutes. Most of them had either connecting flights or important places to go. (I’d like to ask the readers of this blog a question. If this type of thing had happened to you, even if you were totally “in the right”, what are the chances that every passenger in your section of the plane would walk off with you in unison and spend 30-60 minutes of their valuable time defending you to an AA representative.)

5) One passenger was so unnerved by her intimidating behavior that he told the AA representative that if this flight attendant was working his connecting flight, he would not board the plane.

6) My witnesses are not stressed-out, snotty businessmen as some have wondered about. Almost all of them belong to a women’s religious group that promotes peace. One could not have assembled a group of people that was more deferential and polite than this group.

7) Not only has AA already called me to profusely apologize, but they have called other passengers on that flight as well to apologize. I know of at least two others on that flight that have filed complaints with AA regarding incidents that were either partially or totally unrelated to my own.

8) I wanted to have this incident quickly fade away, and I diligently avoided engaging this flight attendant for the rest of the trip. The incident itself was not all that eventful. What was disturbing was that the flight attendant spent the rest of the flight attempting to get other passengers to testify for her regarding what had happened. As each passenger in my section individually told her that they disagreed with her version of the incident, the flight attendant progressively grew angrier and more determined to turn a “molehill into a mountain”.

9) For the readers of the article who think this flight attendant was just “having a bad day” and should be left alone, please remember that she handed me a formal warning that threatened potential legal action. The Customer Service Manager who met all of us at the arrival gate stated that while he was shocked by the story we all told in unison, also mentioned that the warning letter was a serious matter that had to be investigated by multiple entities. I ask the readers of this blog how they’d react after being told that by this Senior Manager, especially if they had literally millions of frequent flyer miles with this airline, as I do.”

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I hope the investigation proves this guys version to be true. He was clear and concise in this letter, and if this is exactly what hapened, then a formal investigation shouldn’t take that long. I appreciate his view, and I’m glad he spoke up.

P.S. How the heck do you get millions of frequent flyer miles?? Live on a plane??

You are referring to pudding guy. As for the OP’s question, its not that hard when you fly every week, even domestically, and put every thing you buy on a mileage earning credit card. Look at flyertalk.com for more details.

I anticipate having about 1,000,000 earned miles by the time I’m 30, and I don’t fly often for work.

You don’t get status from credit card miles, you get those from real flown miles or segments. This is one of the flyers that AA doesn’t want to piss off. Of course he lives in DFW, so he doesn’t have a lot of choices…but still.

Sure it isn’t very interesting until it happens to you. I ordered several gifts from Amazon and paid extra for gift wrapping. Last night when I got home from a long day at work my packages finally arrived. You can’t imagine how upset my wife and I were when we found out that the shade of green used to wrap the gifts wasn’t even close to what was shown on the website. We took the tree down, got ride of the cards, discarded all the decorations and told my young kids no Santa, no Christmas. I mean I was supposed to get a very nice pastel green but I got something much closer to forest green.

Hopefully as a family we can recover by next summer and enjoy the 4th of July.

Not likely. She’s probably fairly senior in the union and so she not only gets her pick of flights, but it’s fairly difficult to fire her. Now, if they can prove that she filed a false report/warning (which appears to be the case), then even the union probably can’t protect her.

ME TOO.. I was like… “Whats he done this time? Brutally killed his wife and her “friend” with a knife, left a glove at the scene of a crime, held his best friend hostage and drove down an LA freeway in a Bronco or something?”

Am I the only one who think’s AA’s crisis response is pretty inadequate? Releasing a statement days later after tons of bad PR that only says you’re “investigating the matter”? If this is the best their PR team can do, they should be looking for a new job.

I’m actually thrilled this is getting coverage. We really need the “mainstream” media as focused on these everyday assaults on us as consumers as consumerist is, and it shows the blog is doing its job well.

Corporations need to start being put in mortal economic fear every time they terrorize a consumer to this degree. Act like a human, do the right thing, or pay the mo fo price financially. This woman should also be tracked after being fired so she can never work on an airline again.

Couple of questions. First off, can’t a passenger seek to have an employee arrested by the police? Whatever happened to citizens arrest?
Secondly, how about giving us the name of the offending stewardess,waitress or whatever they call themselves nowadays.

You can not make a citizens arrest on an airplane. You are under the jurisdiction of the flight crew at that time. You can not get pulled over by a police officer and say you pulled me over and nothing was wrong, so I am going to make a citizens arrest.
Furthermore, any person who attempts a citizen arrest is usually a toothless redneck in the Michigan militia. You are laughed at and derided by same people

Unfortunately for this guy, me, and like so many others, someone â€œhaving a bad dayâ€ is not just a simple â€œgrumble under ones breathâ€ in America anymore. Oh it used to be when I was a kid in the 70s, but now â€œbad daysâ€ have turned into a fanatical attitude such as â€œI am going to bust your balls with a temper-tantrumâ€ and because you know why? Because I exist! We have gotten too complacent with punishment in this country. No one is afraid anymore of being indignant or breaking the law. Instead of playing politics, people need to get fired, plain and simple. Female or male, it doesnâ€™t matter. If you cannot treat others with respect, then you donâ€™t deserve a job and there are plenty of other people that can do a hell of a lot better.

AA: it’s always unfortunate when a valued customer has an suboptimal experience aboard one of our flights. After a full investigation, we have taken appropriate action, which we are unable to disclose due to privacy issues. We take customer issues very seriously, and would like to assure everyone that steps have been taken to ensure that every customer continues to receive the exceptional service that American Airlines is known for.

Considering the legal ramifications of the c-muscles actions… she needs to be fired… and then sent to Somali to to be stoned to death. Her actions could have ruined this guys life. Had no one come to his defense he could have very well be carted off and tazered to death. We cannot continue to allow this kind of asshattery to be the norm with people in positions of authority. I hope someone posts her contact info on the interweb and she is harassed for the rest of her pathetic life.

She knew very well that the investigation would go nowhere; she just wanted to humiliate and scare him. At worst, he would never fly with AA again, and at best, he would beg for her to take it back, giving her some measure of elation for the attempt. The fact that many people went out of their way to defend him likely was well outside of her plans.

I do agree with her being fired, though. In the first video, he’s just asking for her to be retrained, but in my opinion, a temper and personality like that cannot be retrained; that’s a personal flaw that this Helen would need to take several years of her life consciously trying to change before she would act the way she needs to naturally. She needs to be fired, but is likely a lawsuit risk, so if she’s found to have been the cause, they would likely try to reassign her elsewhere or promote her to a position where she can’t do any harm.

Next time, instead of getting so defensive AFTER you get your tale published, you might consider actually telling all the facts in your story. You are not much better than Helen in the way you hold back facts but get mad because readers don’t have the whole story. How does saying the witnesses had anything to do with churches or organized religion add credibility to your “story”? Are you saying they can’t lie like evil heathens? Why are you going all over the net and TV about this? You are WAY past your 15 minutes of dubious fame.

Calling yourself Religious makes you more credible?
I am always very suspicious of adults who put so much time and energy into their imaginary friend.

Just because someone doesn’t believe in your god doesn’t make them a good person (think Catholic priests who are molesting the boys), and someone who is an atheist isn’t necessarily a liar who shouldn’t be trusted.

he said he didn’t even want the publicity, and would’ve rather had it all blow over, but now that it is public, he wants to settle things. he didn’t even write the original story, it was written by someone who saw the whole incident occur and then acted as one of the witnesses.

READING IS GOOD WE LEARNED IT IN SCHOOL USE IT LOVE IT DON’T BE A TOOL

No, it was written by someone who was asleep during the genesis of the incident and pieced it together from people who observed the incident. It’s a second-hand account of the incident, with descriptions of what was said instead of the actual words.

If Mr. Reid is going to tell off the haters, and wants to “settle things”, then he should put forth his version of events. You can’t settle things by saying “my own response would be longer than most people would care to read”, and then relay a few high-level points about how we’re all good people, united together in unison on my side, against the scourge of Helen. “He would have absolutely no reason to lie or embellish” does not say what it should: that the facts presented were accurate.

But the story relayed is probably more or less accurate, and Helen was probably out of line. Although I want to have sympathy, this guy and the original poster exude an air of cliquey superiority (e.g. “I take the word of the other 5 friends I work with (including my wife) as truth”, “[Helen] should find a job like flipping burgers”) when talking about this incident.

I imagine that one could, in fact, find many groups of people more deferential than them.

Alright, having watched the Fox and Friends video now, I accept that he’s presented his version of events. They are, indeed, different in subtle yet important ways than Mr. Hoss’s second-hand version.

Also note that Christi Hoss said “he was so quiet that I was sitting in the seat behind him and I couldn’t even hear him speak.” (!) So Mr. Hoss was asleep, and Mrs. Hoss couldn’t hear what Mr. Reed said to Helen. If at some point he needs witnesses in his defense against anyone but an Internet jury, he’d be advised to find better ones.

That bitch flight attendant should be fucking fired. They think now they are the shit and can treat anyone however they feel. If a customer does something he will get in trouble with federal law. Its a fucking joke.

I would simply be filing a million dollar lawsuit and offering to drop it once proof of the FA’s firing is delivered. She should also be arrested for causing a disturbance on a plane and bothering other passengers / making them fear for their safety.

I think the stewardess is ready for retirement. She can’t take the stress and it’s the customer
that is giving her a job. I would be livid if she treated me that way. I have never had an ex-
perience like that and I have been flying since 1975. What is American thinking about now?
She should be dismissed and that’s final. No one should be treated that way, especially if you’re a paying customer.